Benchmarking portfolios

Benchmarking in Sharesight allows you to select any ETF in our database to use for comparison against your portfolio. This feature will add an additional row to the summary bar, which allows you to compare the percentage return of your portfolio to the percentage return of the benchmark.

The common benchmark drop-down menu offers you pre-selected options for tracking your portfolio against popular market indexes. The list is made up of popular index-tracking ETFs.

You may also search for a specific security by typing in the name or code.

Once you’ve located the security, click apply and the benchmark will be saved against your portfolio. You’ll immediately notice a new line of data underneath your portfolio’s capital, income, and currency return, which displays the selected benchmark’s performance.

Clicking on the name of the benchmark will display the Share Checker for the benchmarked instrument. This allows you to view the underlying prices and distributions that are used to calculate the benchmark percentage return.

Note that in order to accurately compare your portfolio to your chosen benchmark, Sharesight assumes that you’d invested equal amounts of money in both for the duration of the reporting period. When you plot your holdings on the chart, you’ll see that the Y-axis scales so that both investments begin at the same point. Tracking your mouse along the lines will display a pop-up that shows how the value of each changes. It’s important to understand how to interpret the return index graph.

For more information on why we use real ETFs as our suggested benchmarks versus the broad market indexes, and how we calculate benchmarking performance, read our benchmarking article or follow the topic in our community forum.